by Danyel Smith
ALSO BY DANYEL SMITH
More Like Wrestling
For
Parker
and
Hunter
and
for
Elliott
Hail, happy saint, on thine immortal throne,
Possest of glory, life, and bliss unknown;
We hear no more the music of thy tongue,
Thy wonted auditories cease to throng.
Thy sermons in unequall’d accents flow’d,
And ev’ry bosom with devotion glow’d,
Thou didst in strains of eloquence refin’d
Inflame the heart, and capitivate the mind.
Unhappy we the setting sun deplore,
So glorious once, but ah! It shines no more.
—PHILLIS WHEATLEY, 1770
CHAPTER I
Sleek and pinned-back as a ballerina, Eva strode through the Great Hall of Waters, efficiently hiding hurt. She was a living ad for sexiness and blithe self-sufficiency, an earthbound overlord of sun and stars. Eva was at the Lost City Resort on Paradise Island in the Bahamas, and Eva had to pee.
She clicked past a casino’s smoked windows and stepped into a lobby restroom of the Coral Towers. In a mirror, Eva checked her quick grimace for smudges, then, from the knot at her nape, deftly pulled bangs across half one eyebrow and fully over the other.
I look good. It’s all about singularity, attitude, and lots a panache. Plus the sit-ups. And the Tuscan pollen face cream with olive oil.
Eva took a long glance at the doors guarding toilets. She tightened up, decided to hold it. Decided the tension would keep her on her toes.
Her cell chirped. A 206 number flashed on the caller ID.
Home calling.
Eva’s father.
She watched the number until it faded. Eva’s new phone fit in her palm like a secret, and she could reach out and be reached wherever she was in the world. Absently, she ran her thumb over the phone’s buttons. Eva believed the cell tripled her productivity and her freedom.
She walked through the Corals toward The Lagoon Bar & Grill, which had been closed to the public for the night to house Showcase Savoir Faire. Eva wasn’t one to sweat promptness. It wasn’t a priority in the music industry. But on this night, she was desperate to get to a show, and with its bright lights, The Lagoon shone like a sanctuary. Eva felt thin-skinned and distracted by the independence of her in-sides. But if she could get to the showcase in time to handle what she was supposed to as associate general manager of Roadshow Records, and get there looking flawless, it might matter less that she was probably pregnant.
In the Coral Lounge Atrium Lobby, Eva’s cell rang again and she quickly answered the familiar 212 number. “It’s Eva,” she said airily, like the caller should be lucky for the connection.
“All on track?” It was Eva’s boss, Judeo-Spanish Sebastian, calling from New York. Judeo-Spanish was the first thing that came to mind about Sebastian because he always talked about Judeo-Spanish history and how, among other honors, Judeo-Spanishness should have a month of its own. He was raised in Arizona, spoke fluent Español. He went to mass on Easter Sunday and Christmas Eve, and demanded a kosher town house at the same time he demanded ebony vertical blinds. He loved to turn cocktail conversation into an homily about how he was a true Sephardic, a converso, a sabatista descended from Jews forced to convert to Catholicism and flee Spain way back in Columbus’s time.
God bless him, Eva often thought. But it’s old.
“Yep,” Eva said to him, “all on track.”
“Sunny’s hype? And you’re sure about these changes to the show, this-”
“I’m sure.” Don’t say “hype,” when you’ve never been, in your life. You hired me to oversee the so-called urban acts so you wouldn’t have to attend Showcase Savoir Faires. Let me do my thing. Sunny was Roadshow’s barefoot, yoga-preaching, tie-dyed, incense-burning superstar singer. Sunny was Eva’s responsibility.
“I don’t have to tell you how much rides on this,” Sebastian said.
“It’s not just the money, though it is that … it’s Sunny … she could … you know her contract situation better than I do.”
Don’t patronize. “It’s all going to work out. I’m sure of it.” Almost.
“Everybody’s contracts are about up-yours … mine.”
Yours pays you out in the millions. Mine—“It’s fine, Seb, all fine. I need to—”
“Go, go! We’re pulling for you back here, Evey. You’re die moneymaker.”
My name is Eva. The tink-tinkle of a nearby fountain caused Eva to tighten up again. But to pee would stab her with the fact that she should be taking the pregnancy test she had in her suite. It would put her in warm wet touch with a life-and-death decision. She walked past another restroom.
“See you when?” Sebastian broke the silence. “Day after tomorrow? Evey?”
“Yes, Seb, for sure.” Eva hated Sebastian’s wheedle. Why wheedle from a position of power?
“You’re my girl,” he said atypically, like she might confirm her loyalty. “You know that. My ace.”
“I’m at the venue,” Eva said. He’d set off an alarm in her brain. She thought he might be overcompensating for something, or that he’d somehow peeped her weakness.
Plus, Eva was actually in front of a store at the Crystal Court: duty-free shopping, local stoneware, and lavishly printed Bahamian picture books. She stared through the window with her jaw tight. Eva heard Sebastian say, “Hit me back later,” as she took in the store’s main display-a basket stuffed with two magnums of champagne, and a tray of chocolates big as a briefcase. The shrink-wrapped basket sat above a sign: THE ULTIMATE GIFT: PURE INDULGENCE.
Eva had one on the vanity in her suite. Card signed, RON.
Dead cell still at her ear, Eva stared at the package.
That lazy motherfucker.
I got your ultimate gift.
The showcase had begun. Almost everyone attending the Vince the Voice Urban Music Takes Over the World: International Marketing for the Millennium convention was packed into a pergola surrounded by a moat filled with real sharks and stingrays. Mostly there were middle-aged eastern and midwestern radio executives at The Lagoon—hometown heroes just town-bound enough to relish Paradise Island for its medley of mock and real splendor. Beneath a ceiling painted to look watery and filled with things thalassic, they drank and ate freely and for free, celebrating year-end bonuses and the heaven of a seventy-five-degree December evening.
At the bar, there were major and minor executives from major and minor record labels. These people had not only shopped for Prada and Zegna at stateside stores, they’d trudged Milan’s Via Spiga lugging ribbon-tied bags and stopping for risotto at trattorias mentioned in magazines. These were Eva’s cronies, and most were notorious either for having seen a project to multiplatinum fruition, or for having run it, burning, into the ground. The ones accorded the most deference had lucratively brought an artist back from the hushed hell of irrelevance. Eva’d done it twice in her career. It was a mission that required an array of exaggerated expressions (including a steadfast poker face), plus experience, contacts, timing, dirt done (and so markers on call), providence, perceived and real power, and luck. Plus the ability to persuade, counsel, negotiate, and straight-out lie—all while seeming to tipsily shoot the breeze.
She was on the brink of a less colossal exercise, but Eva was fighting industry talk of Sunny’s burnout, of Sunny’s disenchantment with Roadshow, and of Sunny’s lack of appreciation for her mostly black fan base. Industry talk had a way of seeping out to the record-buying public, so Eva had been charged—by herself and, to a lesser degree, by Sebastian—with the mission of bringing Sunny back to black. How Eva would articulate such a skill on her résumé she’d work out w
hen the time came. But she had a plan and it was about to go into effect at Showcase Savoir Faire.
Out of respect, Eva’d sent personal invitations for Sunny’s showcase to influential execs from other labels, and she was gratified to see her occasional mentor, Meri “Ms. Exception” Heath, duck in. There were also programmers there from MTV and BET, and columnists, mostly from the trades. Sunny secretly loved being interviewed and written about, dissected, and pseudo-psychoanalyzed, so at Roadshow’s expense, a few high-ranking consumer magazine editors had been flown down. It was a recoupable expense for her company, which meant Sunny was paying for them.
Eva had slaved in artists and repertoire, in marketing, and in radio promotions. She’d worked in Los Angeles, New York, Washington, D.C., and Chicago. Her current position at Roadshow afforded her a bland, professionally decorated three-bedroom on Manhattan’s Riverside Drive, as well as a duplex in Santa Monica, where Eva had installed a stone-trimmed fireplace far too big for her gleaming living room. Eva’d barely been at either place since she’d signed Sunny. There was always another business trip she could take, something more she could be doing for her salary of $531,000 a year, and her “points” on Sunny’s albums. For every CD sold, and in addition to her salary, Eva made a couple of cents. In addition to managing a small staff, and being responsible for a hefty portion of Roadshow’s profit margin, what Eva did for this money, when it came down to it, was attend to Sunny. Eva was quite clear on the fact that any labels’ self-depiction—that it was a genuine sponsor for its artists—was bogus, and that the only fair payments record companies made were to those acts who had the means to coerce accountability.
Eva looked up at the slaty clouds and placed her hand briefly over her navel. Sunny, Eva thought, has the means.
So Eva was able to look Sunny in her face, most of the time, with some ease.
In a wraparound white silk jersey dress, Eva stood at The Lagoon’s bar on four inches of stiletto. Across her foot, where her toes began, was a white kid braid. Another, with the help of a tiny gold buckle, fastened above her ankle. Nicks decorated Eva’s shins—trophies from long-ago softball afternoons. Each of her ears was pierced once, but her skin was otherwise pure; not so much as a strawberry mark, or a ladybug of a mole. Her neckline plunged, but Eva had on a reliable, Swiss-lace, half-cup bra. Lifts ’em up round and high. Shows everything but itself. These younger chicks, even the ones with a check—still wearing dresses from mall stores and Playtex brassieres. Eva was as comfortable in her outfit as she was in a jogging suit. She strode and stood in her teetery sandals like they were rubber-soled. Been doing this a long time.
In walked Ron. Eva liked that Ron was gruff and clever and that he didn’t care that people knew he was a sneak. Eva liked his wide, firm body. He was president of urban music at one of the major record labels. Properly late and properly dapper, Ron had his palm on the back of a former MC, a pretty girl who’d had one regional hit and then faded from the public eye, but not completely from Ron’s. That she was his choice for the Bahamas made sense, as the girl was from nearby Tampa. Eva’d heard the girl was teaching elementary school, and a recent Where-Are-They-Now?-type radio show had mentioned that the Tampa teacher had “renounced music and the business that was killing it.”
Yeah, Eva thought. Right. More like mad that her singles never hit outside of Florida.
Tampa homegirl was thick and pretty. Hair pinned in an elegant bun, she had on an ill-fitting, expensive orange dress.
Blocky sandals, probably from Macy’s. Nails done by Koreans. Tacky.
Ron guided his date to a choice table. She wore the tetchy face of a sister who’d be happier laid up in front of a movie on her suite’s pay-per-view.
A bartender was trying to catch Eva’s eye. She knew he wanted to offer her something special.
Ron nodded sharply at Eva, face tight because he knew the situation called for it. Once Tampa MC’s face was turned, Ron glanced at Eva conspiratorially
No doubt, Eva thought. I’m in on it.
Ron walked to Eva at the bar, ordered a cognac and a champagne cocktail. “You got the stuff?”
“Stuff.”
“Don’t fuck with me.” He was breezy, watching his drinks being made. “That champagne basket. For later.”
“You look busy, sweets. Doing the most, as usual.”
“Huh? She’s been here. Got her over at the Hurricane Club. Away from all this bullshit.”
“Away from me.” It was a slipup and Eva felt it, like she’d tumbled off her heels.
“You? Oh I know you don’t trip off … me … girls, women, whatever. I’m talking about … all these people. She hates it.”
“She thinks it’s fake.” Now Eva wanted her something special. “She’s real.”
Ron picked up his cocktails, turned to walk back to his table. “She don’t understand it.”
And she doesn’t want to. Eva finally looked directly at the bartender. “What you got for me?” She toyed with the snarl of yarn and bead bracelets on her left wrist.
“Little gin with coco water,” the man said, smiling. “Good for you.”
Eva shook her head. “You got a nice single malt?”
“He’s got whatever you want,” Hakeem said, knuckle suddenly, softly on the outside of her thigh. “And pour me a vanilla rum. Same as before.” Hakeem was a consultant, an old-school music impresario, and Eva’s boy from way back.
Six years ago, Hakeem had been accused of mishandling funds and was asked to resign. He retained boisterous lawyers, and went to the urban and the white press screaming about “the plantation system,” and the “Jim Crow setup” in the record business. He detailed salary discrepancies between the “pop” and the “urban” departments for jobs with the same titles and tasks. Until he was called on the carpet, Hakeem had never complained. So his own staff only vaguely supported him when he went Al Sharpton. The theory everyone operated from was that Hakeem was sitting on $15 million. It was 1998, though, and he still wore linen like the DRY-CLEAN-ONLY status symbol it had been for brothers in the eighties—stiffly pressed to a sheen.
“Where you been?”
“Looking for you,” Hakeem said. “Smoke with me.”
Unsmiling, the bartender put both drinks on the bar.
“Evey! Baby!” Myra strolled up, laughing. A tiny tape recorder dangled from a rhinestone strap at her wrist. Sunny’s brother D’Artagnan was with her, and it looked like he was holding blood in his mouth.
Dart seemed taller. Less heavy. Eva hadn’t seen him in four months. She talked to him on the phone all the time, business, but their curt conversations had revealed nothing of his transformation. The last time she’d seen him—In Toronto, Eva thought, for some meeting with some producers—he’d been his usual bulging self, in decent sprits, but always watching the door, or for a gap in conversation, anything through which he could escape his job as Sunny’s manager.
Fixed to Dart’s slab of a back was a tangerine shirt, wet and glued to a wetter sleeveless white undershirt. Sweat wept at his temples. Sweat dripped from the top of his flat nose.
Crybaby, Eva thought. Control yourself.
“I’ve been searching all over for you,” Myra said, wagging her recorder at Eva like it was finger. “D’Artagnan’s trying to get me drunk! Ha! He don’t know the blocks I been around.”
“Miss Myra,” Eva said with open arms. “Queen of All. In the house to see my girl set shit off.” Myra’d been running her own so-called marketing company for eleven years. But she didn’t have clients. Mostly she hosted cocktails—little in-things at which attendance was required in order to gain her good graces. Her clout rested in a gossipy, preachy weekly column—“Square Biz”—mass-faxed to everyone in urban music. Myra had long-standing associations with the United Negro College Fund, Soul Train, and the Congressional Black Caucus. She was petted and patronized and often paid as a consultant by casting directors and potential corporate sponsors. Myra led them toward trendily yet completely
clothed artists who lamented in interviews about the state of the youth and the injurious, embarrassing nature of gangsta rap. Myra’s faves publicly craved “positivity” for the Community, so, after Chevrolet or Budweiser phoned Myra for a high sign, Chevy or Bud called the artist’s manager: You want to be a part of our concert tour? We’d like to use a song of yours in a commercial for our new sedan. Then glasses clinked. Myra clocked her dollars and her power points. Eva would sit back at these buttery post-contract-signing lunches and calculate how much authenticity her artist was trading. She’d figure out from which pile her own money would be made.
At the showcase, Myra was sparkly and important. “Yes, sweetums. Here strictly for Sunny. And my expectations are high-high-high.” Myra gave a little cackle, and then looked at Eva more directly. “I know you’re not nervous.”
“Never that,” Eva said. Eva liked Myra, but hadn’t trusted her for years.
“You all right? You look fabulous as usual.”
Eva squared her shoulders, resurrected her game face, and showily hitched up her already high breasts. “I am fine, sister. I know you know how I do.”
Dart slid up to the bar next to Eva. Got the bartender’s attention, asked for tonic with lime. Dart looked at Eva with hazy interest. She was the busty cover of a how-to he’d half-read.
“Goodboy,” Eva said to him after a sweet wink good-bye to Myra. “Keeping your mind on the job.”
“What job?” Dart said.
“Taking care of Sun.” Eva took a swallow of Scotch as Hakeem and Myra discussed the details of their earlier weed purchase. “If you’d ever do it.”
“This ain’t the place to discuss.” Then Dart pressed Eva’s wrist, as if to convey that what came next was an authentic request, apart from the mise-en-scène. “Talk with me about my so-called job,” D’Artagnan said, “later.”
Eva finished her drink. I’m probably giving the baby defects. She looked again to the bartender. “Tall glass of still water, please?”